Inquisition made by the jurors named
below, that is, William of St. Laud, Willard de Lincoln, William Baudewin,
Alexander Debonere, James Motun, William Gamel, William Hod, Peter Palmar,
Nicholas le Burgeis, Robert Drueri, William Loueman, William Balle,
Henry fitz Richard, Ralph Fode, William le Chapmon, and Thomas Geram,
concerning the payments called gavelpence and pontage, by what right
and for what reason they were first given and taken.

Who say under oath that, in the time of Robert de Medland,
earl of Leicester, it happened that
two kinsmen  that is, Nicholas son of Hakon and
Geoffrey son of Nicholas of Leicester  made
wager of battle for a certain piece
of land, concerning which they were in a legal dispute. They fought
from just after dawn until noon and beyond. As they were engaging
in combat together in this way, one of them drove back the other
as far as a certain small ditch and, as [the
other] stood at the edge of the ditch and risked falling into it,
his kinsman said to him: "Careful you don't fall into the ditch that
is behind you". And there was at once such a great outcry and uproar
from those sitting and standing around that their noise was heard by
the earl as far away as the castle; he then made enquiry why there
was such a clamour, and was told that two kinsmen were engaged in
judicial combat over a piece of land and that one had driven
the other back as far as a certain small ditch, and as the one
stood at the edge of the ditch and risked falling into it, the other
warned him.

The burgesses then, moved indeed by pity, made an agreement with
the earl that they would pay him threepence a year from each house
whose gable faced onto the high street,
on condition that he grant them that from that time forward all pleas
concerning them be tried and judged by the
24 jurats who had been established
in Leicester since ancient times. This was granted them by
the earl, and this was how the payment called gavelpence first came
to be levied. That Earl Robert was succeeded, after his death, by
his son and heir Robert who, for the benefit of the soul of his
father completely remitted the payment called gavelpence, and by
his charter quitclaimed it in perpetuity. That particular charter,
along with many other documents and charters, was given into
the custody of a certain burgess and clerk called Lambert, against
whom evildoers arose by night, because he was thought to be wealthy,
and they burned down his houses and also his feet
[sic] together with the aforesaid
charter and many other writings.

At a later time there was a certain clerk called
Simon Maudut in the town of Leicester
who, for a period after the death of that Robert earl of Leicester
who had made the charter of quitclaim, was
farming the office of
provost of Leicester and
he extortionately collected, through his own willfulness and
personal force, the payments called gavelpence,
distraining all those
who resisted paying, saying that they should show him the quitclaim
that warranted their resistance  for he knew perfectly well
that this quitclaim was burnt. And it is for this reason that
they are paid to this very day.

This inquisition was held in the presence of Roger de Ekden, then
bailiff, Peter fitz Roger, then mayor of Leicester, Ralph Oliver,
Richard de Campeden, and many others, on 17 March 1253.

Inquisition made by the same jurors before the same Roger, Peter
and others concerning pontage at Leicester:

Who say under oath that, in the time of the same Earl Robert, the forest
around Leicester was so large, heavy, and dense, that it was barely
possible to travel along the paths through that forest, because of
the large number of dead trees fallen down and boughs blown down by
wind. By the decision and consent of the earl and his council, it
was then permitted to those who wished to go looking for dead wood
that they might have six cartloads for a penny, a horseload a week
for a halfpenny, and a man's load a week for a farthing. These
payments were initially collected at the exit to the woods, but
later between the outskirts of the town and the woods, and eventually
the money was collected at the town bridges of Leicester; there at
first there was a certain warden called Penkrich, at whose request
the earl subsequently granted him a plot of land next to the bridge,
to build upon, so that it would be more convenient for him to collect
those tolls there. For a long time thereafter this Penkrich collected
the payments, not only those customarily levied on dead wood but also
on green wood and wood for sale, and afterwards this
[practice] came to be treated
as a custom.

So that the truth of this finding is more apparent and evident, it
can clearly be seen from the fact that no outsiders bringing wood
or timber  whoever they might be, or from whatever regions
they come, whether from the forest of Arden, or Cannock Chase, or
Needwood forest  pay nor ever were accustomed to pay any pontage,
excepting those [coming] from
Leicester's forest.

DISCUSSION

In historians' perhaps ultimately futile consideration of whether
"burgess" had a precise, technical application in the eleventh century,
one criterion suggested as a defining feature has been the obligation
of some town-dwellers to pay (normally to the king) certain customary
dues that had, or had acquired, a distinctively urban character.
These included tolls on goods brought to the town for sale and fixed
rents for town properties. The former might be collected at various
points of entry into the town or its market, including bridges, where
such levies had names such as bridge-silver or pontage (a term usually
applied to tolls levied to finance bridge maintenance). The latter were
typically referred to as landgable or
hawgable. "Gable" derives
from an Anglo-Saxon term for a gift or tribute, and the gavelpence
which was the subject of the Leicester inquest was essentially
a version of hawgable; although it is possible to infer from the
jurors' story that the original meaning of "gable" had been forgotten
and was thought to be associated with the gable of the house from
which hawgable rent was due.

Leicester has a long history, as a Roman base and one of the key
boroughs of the Danelaw. It was held mainly by the king at the
time of Domesday Book but, whereas most long-established boroughs
were kept within the king's hand, Henry I turned over his lordship
to Robert de Beaumont, Count of Meulan  probably the
Robert de Medland mentioned in this document  who founded
a dynasty of the Earls of Leicester, although it is not clear whether
he had that title himself. This "mesne lordship" (i.e. intermediating
between the community and the ultimate lordship of the king) put
Leicester at a disadvantage compared to similarly sized and
well-situated towns under the direct lordship of the king. The king
saw both economic and political advantages in granting a certain
measure of self-government to towns, whereas mesne lords had less
to gain and tended to be more conservative with regard to surrendering
revenues and authority in return for a
fee-farm; Leicester was
unable to obtain such a lease of local jurisdiction until 1375
(see "Grant of farm by a mesne lord").

We must view these two judicial inquiries in the larger context of
Leicester's efforts to break free from the dominion of the earl.

The purported remission of gavelpence assumes that the interests of the
community were being represented by particular individuals; and
handing over to Lambert the quitclaim, apparently with other
town documents, equally suggests some mechanism for communal
decision-making and representation. There was a mechanism in place,
in the form of the merchant gild; Robert de Beaumont formally
recognized this gild early in the twelfth century, in a charter
stating that it gild had existed since the time of William I,
although we should not trust too much in such statements. It could
simply have been that Lambert (as a resident perceived as wealthy)
had a relatively sturdy and secure house, but a more likely reason
for assigning important evidences to Lambert's safekeeping would have
been that he was an officer of the merchant gild. Although the
earliest surviving gild roll does not date earlier than 1196, the
character of that record suggests it was neither exceptional nor
the earliest in a series. The gild likely had kept records for
a much longer period and would have had some approach to archiving
them.

Robert II confirmed his father's recognition of the merchant gild
in a charter whose principal aim was to grant the burgesses freedom
from having to pay suit to any manorial or other court outside the town;
instead the earl acknowledged the burgesses' right to have their cases
heard in the community churchyard, probably referring to the location
of the portmanmoot (reminding
us of a similar situation at
Ipswich); the church was not named but was possibly St. Nicholas,
an early foundation of unusual size which has led to the suggestion
it may have been built for a Mercian bishop, and opposite whose
churchyard a moothall was built in the latter half of the
thirteenth century. The merchant gild, although its principal duty
was to protect and support the mercantile interests within
the community, remained for some time  rather longer than in
most other large towns  an important institution for furthering
the aspirations of the community as a whole, not least because
the portmanmoot could not be an effective tool in that regard, since
the earl's provost presided over it and the revenues it generated went
to the earl. The gild had its own periodic meetings at which
minor transgressions and some infringements of local custom could
be judged.

Unable to obtain control over the election of the provosts (bailiffs)
of the town, Leicester resorted, around 1250, to giving the
gild alderman a second hat to wear: that of mayor, an office
more representative of the community as a whole. The mayor came
to co-preside over the portmanmoot, and it is probably in that
setting that the inquisitions recorded here were held. Although
there is no extant record that the earl officially sanctioned any right
to elect a mayor, he acquiesced on condition that the burgesses
presented newly-elected mayors to him for confirmation. But there
is indication in 1257-58 of some difficulty surrounding the mayoralty,
since particular efforts were made to consult the earl on the
mayoral elections. Possibly the mayoralty, or the limits of its powers,
had become a bone of contention, as was the case at
Lynn around the same period. Creation
of a mayor was likely part of a broader initiative to commute
traditional obligations to the earl into an annual farm. In the
year before the inquisitions, a tax had been levied on the community
to pay for anticipated costs when the king's justices itinerant came
to the town, which may imply that the town was pursuing legal avenues
in that forum. And during 1253-54 the merchant gild was displaying
particular vigour in disciplining offenders against community interests.

To the modern eye the two inquisitions appear a ploy to establish
a legal record registering the burgesses' interpretation of events,
which they might then use to their advantage in negotiations with
the earl; or perhaps one should rather say the interpretation of
a selected group of burgesses among whom numbered several leading
citizens possibly associated with the party interested in winning
greater independence from feudal lordship. There are clearly elements
of historical fact in the events recounted by the inquisition jury.
It seems probable, however, that the story of the judicial combat
itself was a local legend (although perhaps preserving a memory of
some actual occurrence) which later became associated as an explanation
for the custom of hawgable; the two elements may even have been tied
together, through collusion of the jurors, specifically for
the inquest, in order to suggest that the burgesses had agreed  we
may infer, under a certain compulsion  to paying hawgable to
the earl in return for the right to the medieval equivalent of
trial by jury rather than the hated judicial combat. Whether
the explanation of pontage by reference to a special toll on dead wood
is likewise some kind of confusion cannot be said, but again it
reflects a common burgess belief that, over time, legitimate levies
might expand into unwarranted exactions. We should remember, however,
that while we today might find the connections between, for example,
the duel, the crowd's uproar (possibly a riot), and the agreement with
the earl, tenuous  even though each individual event may have
hold the memory of an actual occurrence  evidently to
medieval people the connected sequence was plausible enough. What
we may have here is not so much fabrication of events but temporal
compression to suggest or emphasize their association.

Despite the possible intrusion of legend into these accounts, they
nonetheless reflect some key features of the effort towards urban
self-determination. Certainly both hawgable and exemption from combat
were both features that historians have considered characteristics of
borough status. But the introduction of the story of a specific duel
was a device aimed at suggesting to the court that extenuating
circumstances had forced them to concede a financial obligation
they would not otherwise have incurred. The burgesses' belief that
the earl's officers  provost and bridge-keeper  were
exceeding their duties to the point of extortion is also a common
feature in urban struggles for independence; the stories presented
to explain the levies to which the burgesses objected are less
important to us than the fact that the burgesses wished to rid themselves
of those obligations to their overlord.

Following the findings of the inquisitions, the community authorities
levied a special tax on residents to raise money to buy from the earl
(ca.1254) a perpetual remittance of pontage, alias "briggesilvir",
and gavelpence. The inquisitions may have been held to establish
a rationale for such an initiative, or a legal record suggesting
that earl's right to gavelpence and pontage was questionable, thus
creating a stronger case for the burgesses prior to their entry
into negotiations with the earl. The money raised would have been
used to pay a lump sum to persuade the earl to issue his charter of
remittance, and/or to help buy local properties whose annual rents
were handed over to the earl as compensation for his loss of
the traditional revenues.

NOTES

"jurors"
Of the jurors: William de St. Lo was one of the earliest holders of
the mayoralty, having previously served as alderman of the
merchant gild (1230s) and even earlier as one of the gild councillors
(ca.1225); Willard de Lincoln entered the merchant gild in the 1220s,
was one of its councillors ca.1225, and was one of the provosts in 1239
and again ca.1250; William Baldwin (d. ca.1258) had likewise sat on
the gild council ca.1225; Alexander le Debonair, a member of the
merchant gild since 1243, acted as mayor's deputy in 1257 and held
the mayoralty himself from 1270-75; Ralph Fode became a member of
the merchant gild in 1240; William Balle appears to entered
the merchant gild in 1242; James Motun bought a length of cloth
from the gild in 1251, and was evidently a gildsman, as too was
Nicholas Burgeys who later appears as a member of the town/gild council.
It appears almost as though the jurors were listed in the order of
their social status.

"earl of Leicester"
Robert de Beaumont acquired interests in Leicester at the beginning
of the twelfth century, when one of its lords mortgaged his property
to Beaumont to finance participation in a crusade and then died in
that venture. He increased his interests through favouritism from
Henry I, of whom he was one of the leading counsellors, and by
marrying his daughter to the son of another shareholder in the
lordship. His son Robert the Hunchback was the first lord of Leicester
known for certain to have held the title of earl (1118-1168); since
he did not inherit the lordship of Meulan, it is less likely he was
the Robert who was lord at the time of the trial by combat. Robert II
became Henry I's Justiciar and, as such, regent during the king's
absences abroad.

"wager of battle"
Wager of battle refers to trial by battle, a form of
judicial determination which burgesses normally preferred to avoid.

"high street"
The principal road through Leicester, leading between the north and
south entrances through the wall (and earlier through the
burh fortifications;
a cross street ran between east and west entrances, but the high street
looks like the earliest nucleus of habitation.

"24 jurats"
The existence of a town council of 24 jurats, their core task
to administer local laws by judging cases in the town court, is
clearly evidenced in the 1270s, and  as the example of
Ipswich suggests  such a body
may well been around for decades. It was probably the same group as
the merchant gild council of 24, mentioned as early as 1225. But it
would be stretching the evidence too far to connect either of these
24 with a possible group of pre-Conquest "lawmen" such as are known
to have existed in several other towns that, like Leicester, came
under Danish control or influence.

"Simon Maudut"
A William son of Simon Maudit joined the merchant gild of Leicester
in 1209.